


Like a Necessary Precaution

by scintillio_coll



Series: Nancy who is not the same Nancy [1]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, What Have I Done, meandering nonsense, steve harrington is not a bad guy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-08-08 19:56:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7771060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scintillio_coll/pseuds/scintillio_coll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nancy is different. Nancy has changed. She sneaks boys into her room and hunts monsters and finishes what she starts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Necessary Precaution

Nancy knew that Steve would be different.

And of course he is, he was shifting into another form even before he felt contact between nail-riddled bat and off-white flesh. Before seeing the windows of the Byers’ house blink like tired eyes, decision on the tip of his tongue.

Nancy loves thinking about that moment, that Steve’s catalytic instant is so easy to pinpoint. He came back for her. For _them_. Came back to be better than the moment before.

The kind of man he is becoming, climbing ladders and scrubbing, is exactly who Nancy hoped he had been, a hundred years ago at the mall with Barb when nothing fit right or sent the right message and Barb only huffed and rolled her eyes. Some of the last things Barb ever did, actually.

But _that’s_ the thing, Nancy thinks. Barb _is_ dead and Nancy is different, too. Steve became the guy who comes back.

And she became the girl who pointed a gun at him.

That sort of thing doesn’t really _go away_.

_______

 

So Nancy has changed.

Not wholly, not even enough that a percentage can be applied. Not that she would take a stab at a number anyway. 20% changed? Lower? Fifteen?

She’s changed, naturally, by the big things. Barb. Oh God, Barb. And Eleven. And the echo of _gone gone gone_ and all those twinkling, threatening, alarm bell lights that she still sees in Hawkins’ few large intersections.

She’s changed by the pink spray paint. The blood on Jonathan’s knuckles. The realization that her brother is more than this constant, blank, warm thing that sits beside her at breakfast, but a complex system of underground caves and tunnels, a cartography of angst and conscious and vulnerability and good nature that should have been so much more obvious.

It’s not subtle, looking back. Reviewing the footage with detached curiosity. A 24 hour period of endless alternations bookended.

_______

 

_“I’ll do it,” he holds his hand out for the gun and she wants to give it to him. Yeah, she wants to free herself of this uncomfortable obligation. And it is his gun. Even if she’s the one with the sharp eye, the one who isn’t aiming for the air between targets._

_“I thought…”_

_“I’m not 9 anymore,” he spits defensively._

_So she hands it over._

_______

 

The story comes out slowly, in pieces. The great climaxes for them all were lived separately, in the three great sets of the play.

The School, The House, The Upside-Down.

“That wasn’t very smart,” Mike tells her. His voice is muffled, even though he’s upright, fiddling with a D&D figurine on the couch beside her.

“Well, we didn’t have much of a choice, Ms. Byers and the Chief were just walking in-“

“No,” Mike shakes his head and points to the gauze still wrapping her palm. “Like cut your leg or something next time. You need your hand to do stuff.” Even in his depression he thinks clearer than her.

“The bear trap, though,” he cracks a genuine smile. He _is_ a boy, after all, whose still realizing that his sister is a monster-hunter. “That sounds pretty awesome.”

_______

 

Her hand heals slowly. It probably could have used stitches, way back when ambulances were still illuminating the front yard and everyone was searching for faces in the growing throng.

But she didn’t get any. Neither did Jonathan, she remembers. Waving the nurses away dully while Will slept on in the hospital bed beside him.

She tracks its progress closely, examining the skin every night for infection, guessing at the nature of the inevitable scar.

Part of her thinks that once her hand is healed, everything else will…

She throws that thought away quickly. Her hand heals slowly. Everything else heals slower.

_______

 

Steve understands because Steve is now the kind of guy who _understands_. She chokes a little when the Barb in her head rolls her eyes in disgusted disbelief.

“I’m not who you want to trap demons with,” he shrugs.

She sighs, "That's not what I just said." But maybe, a little,  _it was._

“I get it. Nancy, I don’t _want_ to be. Shit, that’s not someone you have to be either.”

So Nancy has changed. Maybe not completely, not even enough to put a number on. But she _hunts monsters._

That sort of thing doesn’t really _go away_.

_______

 

She’s sitting on a low cabinet against the wall of the darkroom, Jonathan at his station a few feet away. The pictures are a combination of Christmas and New Years, each image a strobing mess of string lights and smiles.

She watches him flex his left hand and knows how the palm can ache.

The steak knives weren’t nearly as sharp as they had naively assumed. The cuts not all that clean.

“Can I ask you a question?”

He grunts an assent.

“About that night.”

He stiffens a little, but nods after a pause.

“You said I didn’t have to. You said I didn’t have to cut-”

“Come on, Nancy,” he tosses the tongs onto the table in frustration. He seems frustrated with her a lot, “Was I supposed to be _happy_ about it?”

“We had the damn knives already and you said…” she stops herself, glaring at him in the twilight.

She’s offended, she realizes. Offended that he couldn’t see it, the quiet and profound transition that started when that poor deer was dragged to a poorer death, had finished right there, in his kitchen. That he was panting into her face the exact moment when the Nancy who was before changed just enough to be the Nancy who was left after.

It’s so dim, she can barely see his eyes below his brow and shag of hair.

“I was wrong,” he says finally. He stretches his hand again, fingers splaying. “I know you had to…I know you had to finish what we started.”

When Jonathan understands it’s way better than when Steve _understands_.

“I should have known by then,” he smiles and she can only really see his teeth, “that you didn’t mean finish it halfway.”

______

 

Nancy is different. Nancy has changed. She sneaks boys into her room and hunts monsters and finishes what she starts.

The Nancy she is now would have never handed back the gun.

_______

 

She thinks she’s the kind of girl now who sneaks into boy’s rooms at night. But hunched over, feet planted on the shingled roof and the cold nighttime air ghosting it’s way through her pants and socks, she decides that she definitely still is not.

She thinks about Mike’s sound advice, _cut your leg or something_ , and about the difference between being _brave_ and being _stupid_. Nancy realizes that you don’t have to be both at the same time.

_______

 

Chief Hopper’s truck slowly comes into view as they crunch down the Byers’ drive side by side, Mike pushing his bike along by foot.

“He’s over here a lot,” Mike says, his voice loaded. He knows it means something, just like Will does, like Nancy does. Maybe a few months ago they would have all snickered about it, happy to assume they knew everything there was about the gnarled relationships between adults. Between people. They don’t, and she sees that now.

“Good,” she says resolutely. “I feel better when we’re all…”

She is interrupted by the distinct sound of bicycle tires on gravel behind them, Lucas and Dustin appearing from around the bend.

Mike gives her a look, a rare one, the one she only gets when the _smart_ part of his brain outweighs the _brave_. The one she gets when he stops looking at her as a monster-hunter and sees her as the Nancy who is not the same Nancy.

“Together,” he finishes for her, before hopping onto his bike.

_______

 

She sits with Jonathan on the little knoll near the shed. In the house at her back, the faint thudding tempo of a hammer lumbers towards them. Hopper is still finding things to fix.

They stare into the sparse woods stretching out before them. The boys are in sight, at least for the time being, picking their way sedately towards Castle Byers. They take their time more now, like they aren’t ever in a hurry to get anywhere.

It’s better than constantly running.

There’s still a bite in the air, the ground hard and cold, but she doesn’t want to go inside. She and Mike are rarely out of earshot these days. It’s not overprotectiveness or paranoia, he’s proven he can take care of himself better than her. But it does feel safer. Being close. Just in case.

“Like a necessary precaution. Like a seatbelt,” Jonathan suggests when she tries to explain.

“Yeah, like…if something’s going to happen again, might as well be…together,” she nods.

“That’s how I feel about Will. Mike is lucky to have you,” he plucks at the half frozen grass and fails to not grin at her, a really pleased smile, like she just surprised him.

The cold keeps her from blushing and the just different enough Nancy keeps her voice level, “It’s not just Mike, you know.” She taps at his left hand and he instantly flips up his palm.

His scar is uglier than hers. Thicker, raised, and pale. She doubts he took as much care while the skin was closing up. Or maybe he just cut himself worse, that wouldn’t shock her.

She presses her fingers to it and frowns, not sad so much as contemplative, “This sort of thing doesn’t really _go away_.”

He snags her fingers in his, his other hand’s on her cheek the second before he kisses her. It sounds like he tried to whisper _Nancy_ but his mouth got to her too fast. His lips are soft but his grip on her is firm and real and she's momentarily relieved that Mike is away. 

Jonathan is now the kind of guy who finishes what he starts, too.

**Author's Note:**

> I do not think Nancy Wheeler is the kind of girl who can just forget that she's a monster-hunter.
> 
> With that being said, I'm sorry that this was a meandering piece of nonsense.


End file.
